Impact of gender and parent's marital status on adolescents' suicide ideation

This study investigated the effect of gender and parents ’ marital status on adoles-cents ’ suicidal ideation in a sample of Grade 8 and Grade 9 students (mean age 14.12 years) in Singapore. Two hundred and seventy-one (149 boys and 122 girls) students completed the junior high school version of the Suicidal Ideation Ques-tionnaire (SIQ-JR) and a short demographic questionnaire. Consistent with our hypothesis, the 2 (Gender) 2 (Parents ’ marital status) ANOVA yielded a statis-tically significant interaction effect as expected. Specifically, tests of simple effects reveal that adolescent boys from single-parent families were found to be significantly higher on suicidal ideation compared with adolescent boys from two-parent families. This difference was not found among adolescent girls – adolescent girls from single-parent and two-parent families did not differ signifi-cantly on suicidal ideation. Being a boy in a single-parent home environment may increase one’s risk for endorsing clinically significant suicidal ideation